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Maxwell tuned for G5?

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2005 10:13 am
by Kabe
As some of you may know, each G5 processor is equipped with two floating point units, and has additional features like a hardware root.

To use and to benefit from this features, you mustn't usethe Metrowerks compiler, as Metrowerks apparently has stopped compiler development before the G5 - and frankly it looks like it's dead in the water :-(

The IBM compiler seems to be best in terms of number crunching performance, and as the Maxwell renderer is a command line app that is probably written in standard C++, this shouldn't be a major problem.

Any insight if we will see G5 specific stuff in Maxwell?

Thanks

Kabe - eagerly waiting for the Cinema plugin ;-)

Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2005 1:38 pm
by noseman
There is a Mac speed issue with maxwell. NL has mentioned that there where some compiler issues in order to get Mac M~R up-to optimal speed.
I don't know if the xxx33 version has any speed improvements :cry:

Can anyone from NL comment on this?

Thanx!

Posted: Fri Apr 22, 2005 12:42 pm
by Captain Obvious
Unfortunately, IBM's compiler has a non-zero chance of incorrect output, as far as I've heard. It produces fast code, but sometimes code that doesn't work. GCC is much more stable, but also slower. GCC4 is probably the best choice for OS X development.